dragonchild:jst3p: Way to generalize. I know plenty of men who pull their weight in dual income households.

Of course she's generalizing. If you want to talk about a social problem with at least one exception that's the only way to do it.

Fair enough, but my anecdotal evidence suggests that the stereotype of the dual income households where she has to do everything is dying out. Women know they don't have to put up with that shiat anymore.

AverageAmericanGuy:A lot of the "quality of life" complaints derive from the hell that men put up with at home from their wives who complain about the men being at work all the time and never helping at home. It's as if they don't understand the concept of division of labor.

I work hard to support the family, my job is to continue increasing my pay so as to make my family comfortable. Your job as a stay-at-home wife is to take care of the daily routine of the house. Washing the dishes, dear, is your job, no matter how much you think I should do it because you're "tired" and have been "busy all day".

Housework is tough. No one said it wasn't. But so is earning a living. Everyone has a job to do. Quitcherbiatchin.

The vast majority of their wives aren't stay-at-home moms, they are working a full-time job as well.

I work 40 hours a week and get about 4 weeks vacation time. I don't make that much money for the corporate world but my stress level is pretty low. Plus I live a pretty simple life. Never cared about the newest toys. I just like to spend my free time playing in the mountains and seeing new places. If my job becomes stressful I'll go somewhere else for less money and cut back on my lifestyle. Life's too short to be unhappy.

shortymac:Case in point, when my mother came to visit me once after a month of working 12 hour days to launch a website, and she took it upon herself to yell at me for having a messy household. Just me, not my husband or my roommate, both men.

A complicating factor for modern women is that while we where taught to do both traditionally girl and boy chores, our brothers where not. When I confronted my mother about this at a teen*, she confessed that she didn't realize what she was doing this and changed her ways after that.

My Husband and I both had to work this out and it's been a long road. I had to be willing to deal with something less than perfect and he need to learn how to cook and what our "acceptable" level of mess was.

On top of it all, if your Mom is so concerned with your sister's house SHE should pay for a cleaning and laundry service. I know in America people tend to only think this is for the rich but it's not that expensive. Why do you think Mrs. Brady had a housekeeper?

/*I was tried of doing kitchen cleaning, laundry, and weeding while my brothers only had to do lawn work during the summer

It's funny. When we bought our house, Mr. Dragon and I had to set out some rules about division of labor, not because we were trying to be progressive or anything, but because we're both the type who hate it when we have a system and someone else dinks with it. Some of it was pretty gender-neutral; he handles anything plumbing-related, whereas I handle anything electricity-related. This was because my mom's dad had been an electrician, and he'd taught her stuff that she then taught me. I didn't know much, but I knew more than the zero that he did, so that's how it fell.

But some things we just divided along gender lines because that was easier. Anything that needed doing outside the house, apart from tending gardens or specific plants/areas (like the fire pit, or maple trees), is his problem. Mowing, the lawn, getting the trash to the curb (the kids' problem now), etc. And that wasn't because either of us felt strongly about the assigned gender roles, it was because a) he's physically stronger than me (we live on 2.6 acres of forest, so strength matters more) and 2) he's had more experience with large power tools than I have. I can learn power tools, but we got more done faster by eliminating that learning curve. (I've since used those same tools to build shelves for inside and stuff.)

We also learned an important thing from a family counselor (the kids and I all have ADHD, and we've been seen by a lot of specialists over time): that just by the simple fact of our household being "dad, mom, son, son", we have to be extra careful about who does which chores because, even if we never mean to send the message, it's far too easy for the kids to learn that certain jobs are "woman's work" simply because I'm the only one who ever does them. We try to make an effort, but it's insidious how easy it is to accidentally gender-encode a task.

At the end of the day, though, my mom always has a problem. The house isn't completely perfectly clean. There's still painter's tape on the walls from the rooms we didn't quite finish up. The kids don't get a perfectly balanced, HOT breakfast every day and we don't eat a nutritious, three-course (meat, potato, veg) dinner promptly at 6. I don't always make it to every single school performance (I work a traveling job and have MS besides). There will always be a flaw, and I've learned to live with the fact that my mom's gonna get judgey about all the time I spend "playing dolls with my BFFs" (I make and sell dolls, that's the job) and not being farking Donna Reed.

/at this point I just tune her out//she gets even angrier when I do that, but I tune that out now too///we're making it work though/the point is, the article is really good and I'm enjoying the thread immensely

No Such Agency:AverageAmericanGuy: A lot of the "quality of life" complaints derive from the hell that men put up with at home from their wives who complain about the men being at work all the time and never helping at home. It's as if they don't understand the concept of division of labor.

I work hard to support the family, my job is to continue increasing my pay so as to make my family comfortable. Your job as a stay-at-home wife is to take care of the daily routine of the house. Washing the dishes, dear, is your job, no matter how much you think I should do it because you're "tired" and have been "busy all day".

Housework is tough. No one said it wasn't. But so is earning a living. Everyone has a job to do. Quitcherbiatchin.

So after a day at work, HE gets to kick back and put his feet up... but HER day at work keeps going? That sounds... equitable.

If she is a stay at home wife? Yes he does and yes, it is equitable.

1 - 1.5 hour(s) to get food in the kids and get them to

2-3 hours for chores

And that leaves us with abou 4-5 hours for misc. activities. Not counting the overtime and travelling time of the husband.

If being a stay at home parent takes more than 8 hours a day in various chores and responsibilities you are doing it wrong. I advise buying a vacuum cleaner and a clothes washer instead of doing it all by hand.

Hell, even the children are in school for like 35 hours a week. Lots of free time during those hours. And after age 10 or so they'll find things to amuse themselves. They'll dress themselves long before that and they are perfectly capable of making breakfast for themselves.

Shadowe:Why? Because American culture isn't anti-welfare, that's a common misunderstanding. American culture is Pro-Suffering. That's why for all the talk about family values we offer fark all in the way of actually giving people time off so they can actually be with their family.

People USED to make enough money and have enough time off to actually spend time with their families or on civic involvement, that's why parents and especially grandparents talk so much about the freemasons, the elks, bowling leagues... they had the TIME to do this shiat.

WienerButt:I'm 27 so I'm in the beginning stages of the life we all dread. I work for a good company that is actually Canadian and while we don't have Family Day every month like they do they are pretty generous with other benefits.

I took my first trip to Europe a few weeks ago and I was shocked to see so many young people say fark it and just move to an entirely new country and see what they could do to live. The Europeans we met didn't understand why we couldn't extend our vacation and tag along with them to whatever city they were off to next. They all asked if it was true that we worked a ton of hours and only got two weeks off. It was interesting and depressing at the same time.

Canada's family day is once a year and is the same day as US Presidents Day.

Granted, starting with 3 weeks vacation is normal for white-collar work here.

WienerButt:I'm 27 so I'm in the beginning stages of the life we all dread. I work for a good company that is actually Canadian and while we don't have Family Day every month like they do they are pretty generous with other benefits.

I took my first trip to Europe a few weeks ago and I was shocked to see so many young people say fark it and just move to an entirely new country and see what they could do to live. The Europeans we met didn't understand why we couldn't extend our vacation and tag along with them to whatever city they were off to next. They all asked if it was true that we worked a ton of hours and only got two weeks off. It was interesting and depressing at the same time.

This is why Continental Europe has contributed nothing to human civilization in the post-war era.

SpeedyBB:indy_kid: The assembly line at the Ford plant in the very early days was so fast, workers would become psychotic and attack each other. Henry Ford slowed the line and the violence quickly subsided.

IMHO, all the gains of TR's Progressive Republicans and the various unions over the years have essentially been eliminated. Now we're seeing the elimination of basic civil rights with the number of insane SCOTUS rulings, shiat like that AZ law and the Hobby Lobby nonsense.

Give it another decade and we'll envy the Chinese for their civil and worker's rights!

Could this be behind the suicides at Foxcomm? The violence turns inwards.

How anyone can work on an assembly line and not go nuts - that's the miracle.

Thus all those nets around the dorms at the Chinese plants building Apple products to catch the suicide attempts. You work people like slaves and they're gonna snap at some point. I'm just surprised people take it out on their family or co-workers instead of management or the physical plant.

There's a vid online that shows some Chinese kid jumping up from his school desk and out a 5th-floor window. IMHO, if your school system is putting that much pressure on KIDS, imagine what the adults are going through.

dragonchild:Lydia_C: In my fantasy world, I'd love to get rid of salaried positions.

There's a reason for them though. I've worked jobs where some travel was required, for example, to visit customers on-site. At what point am I working or not working? When I'm packing? On the way to the airport? Sleeping on the plane? Eating at a restaurant? Decompressing in my hotel room playing video games? I'm spending time for the company in the sense that I'm away from family in a boring town with nothing to do, but I'm not really on the clock either. And what about response-based on-call work, like electrical repair? They should get paid overtime when they're burning the midnight oil, but do we not pay them when they're at home waiting for a call? It makes it impossible for them (or the employer for that matter) to budget.

For occupations where the definition of "work" is more nebulous, salary makes sense. It doesn't make a lick of sense (except for greedy owners) for stuff like store managers where their work can very easily be measured in hours, and they're only moved to salary to screw them out of 20-30 hours of pay per week.

Mr. Coffee Nerves: You'll be happy to hear that he's in jail now for massive embezzlement and fraud.

I'll keep an eye out for him on next election's ballot.

Actually there is a way to do that. EMTs and similar jobs do have something called "on-call time" that gets paid to them. I think it was something like minimum wage while they where waiting, but as soon as they where called in it's their regular hourly wage. Some nights they didn't get called in and only got like 40 bucks, but at least they got something because they had to be at home waiting and ready to go, couldn't really do anything else.

So for traveling you could work out a system like that or a small bonus per week away from home for your trouble.

Most people I know in the corporate world, of both genders, are working much harder these days than a decade ago. Most of them were "lucky" enough to survive layoffs...so now they're doing two jobs instead of one. They're hard working and conscientious, but it's not mathematically possible to do two...or more than two...full-time jobs at the same time...so quality inevitably suffers.

And before you say "so what", I'll just add that some of them test drugs for efficacy and purity. Drugs for humans. Drugs you may be putting inside yourself some day.

"I stomped around seething that my "egalitarian" marriage left me up late folding laundry or wrapping Christmas presents or doing the dishes while my husband slept soundly. "

Reminds me of my wife. I was working two jobs one of them sweating my ass off slugging overweight packages for fedex from 8 until almost midnight. I had to take an extra shirt with me because my work shirt would be totally soaked. Then i had to drive home and then shower.

Wife would biatch it up to her friends because I was a lazy ass getting to sleep in until 8, while she had to get up at 7.

shortymac:AverageAmericanGuy: A lot of the "quality of life" complaints derive from the hell that men put up with at home from their wives who complain about the men being at work all the time and never helping at home. It's as if they don't understand the concept of division of labor.

I work hard to support the family, my job is to continue increasing my pay so as to make my family comfortable. Your job as a stay-at-home wife is to take care of the daily routine of the house. Washing the dishes, dear, is your job, no matter how much you think I should do it because you're "tired" and have been "busy all day".

Housework is tough. No one said it wasn't. But so is earning a living. Everyone has a job to do. Quitcherbiatchin.

The vast majority of their wives aren't stay-at-home moms, they are working a full-time job as well.

My wife stopped working.

Ask me if she biatches all the time about having to do laundry. Not my laundry, mind you. I do my own, or else I would wake up Monday morning and find that my clothes are either unwashed, or worse, still in the washer.

I worked full time, 9 hours + hour commute each way. Then to Fed 4 hours. 20 minutes home.

Say thanks? Not once.

She did manage to biatch at me for not helping her enough with the kids.

If they want to biatch, they are going to biatch. It doesn't matter if they have a job or not.

When she was mad, she would put the kids to bed early, so I would not get to see them before I had to go to my second job.

jst3p:shortymac: THIS. There's a lot of burden that falls on women: laundry, kid wrangling, organizing household life, cooking, etc.Their hubby's either don't do it because they don't know how or they consider it "girl work".

Way to generalize.

I know plenty of men who pull their weight in dual income households. Hell, I cook more often than she does (it helps that I enjoy it).

Also, if you read my whole post you'd know that I don't lay all the blame on men being lazy. Women also find that it's hard to give up control because the "men won't do it right".

This comes from the fact that culturally the women will be blamed if the house is messy. Also, I find that women have a lot of pressure to be "perfect" and it really farks with their minds. We have to be June Cleaver, the best employee at work, be nice to everyone, and pretty.

While there's a lot of pressure on men they aren't losing sleep over the fact that the dishes aren't done and he's gained a beer belly, it's mostly job/money based.

I think it because a woman's "power" comes from her social standing, which is comprised of her looks, her kids, her household, and now her job. With men a lot of the social standing comes from his money, so they face a lot of pressure to be the best provider, but not have a rocking body and a clean house. He can "buy" his way out of those with golddiggers and maids.

A lot of this isn't conscious, Lois Frankel's work really does a deep dive into this. I highly recommend her books "Good Girls Don't Get the Corner Office" and "Good Girls Don't Get Rich".

Mr. Coffee Nerves:I used to work for a sociopath who truly did believe someone having a family life was stealing from the company. He was big on conference calls at noon on mandated holidays, and he took precisely one week a year off (at the insistence of his wife) but every day of that week he had to have a morning and afternoon conference call and he stayed on email nonstop. He transferred an administrative assistant who had the temerity to take a full week off when her husband died.

You'll be happy to hear that he's in jail now for massive embezzlement and fraud. Apparently that wife was spending every penny she could while he was living his job

I had a boss that was almost as bad as that. He would get mad at people for not answering their phones at 2-3 am when he had a question. When I went on vacation if I wasnt using my phone it was off. He got all pissy that I wasnt answering my phone and asked me where I was and I would say I was camping in the middle of nowhere. He got all pissy about that, but he would go on vacation and call all the time, it was worse than having him here.

Trade Secret:After ten years at the same job, working too many hours, never seeing my kids and feeling like blowing my head off I quit last August. My wife and I worked it so I could have some time to decompress before I went back to work. I am happier and more adjusted. I guess I have become Mr Mom and I dig it.

I am supposed to start a new job this week; (I was head hunted, they came to me) and they may not take me on because I told them my family life, family business (wife has a restaurant) and sanity is more important than cranking out 60-70 hours a week . They didn't understand what I meant. They think it is normal to work that much and never see their families. I tried to explain to them that I spent the last 10 years making someone else rich, working from 4:30 am to 4pm and then fielding calls and emails from home and I wasn't interested in it any more,

I'll work part time for tips before I miss out on family, vacation and sleep ever again.

I think you are one of those lazy Middle-class workers the Republicans were complaining about the other day.

Nutsac_Jim:shortymac: AverageAmericanGuy: A lot of the "quality of life" complaints derive from the hell that men put up with at home from their wives who complain about the men being at work all the time and never helping at home. It's as if they don't understand the concept of division of labor.

I work hard to support the family, my job is to continue increasing my pay so as to make my family comfortable. Your job as a stay-at-home wife is to take care of the daily routine of the house. Washing the dishes, dear, is your job, no matter how much you think I should do it because you're "tired" and have been "busy all day".

Housework is tough. No one said it wasn't. But so is earning a living. Everyone has a job to do. Quitcherbiatchin.

The vast majority of their wives aren't stay-at-home moms, they are working a full-time job as well.

My wife stopped working.

Ask me if she biatches all the time about having to do laundry. Not my laundry, mind you. I do my own, or else I would wake up Monday morning and find that my clothes are either unwashed, or worse, still in the washer.

I worked full time, 9 hours + hour commute each way. Then to Fed 4 hours. 20 minutes home.

Say thanks? Not once.

She did manage to biatch at me for not helping her enough with the kids.

If they want to biatch, they are going to biatch. It doesn't matter if they have a job or not.

When she was mad, she would put the kids to bed early, so I would not get to see them before I had to go to my second job.

Sounds like you and your wife have a problem, don't take it out on the rest of the world because you're unhappy.

Why do we all have to work more now as opposed to the Husband as bread winner home by 5:30 for dinner every night with family of decades past? Just look at executive pay vs avg for every company since the 1950's. Its obvious. Yet when you say things like that your a socialist and you hate America. Whatever.

My Sister and BIL live and work in Germany and they always have free time to travel or tour the countryside on bikes or whatever they choose to do. We are the suckers here folks.

autopsybeverage:Farkingwhatever: I agree. It has something to do with the "get up at 6am, drive to work at 8am to get there by nine, work 'til 5 or 6pm, then get home at 6:30-8:30pm, then try to LIVE a little bit before you realize you gotta go to bed soon because you need to repeat what you just did" philosophy. No family for me, thanks.

I got up at 6, left the hotel at 7, worked until 6, then drove until I got to the next hotel at 11:30 so I can do the same thing at another business tomorrow. So at least you go home at night... mine only sees me from Thursday nights til Sunday afternoons, and then I'm usually in my home office getting reports finished and prepping for two weeks out. On the other hand, I love what I do. I'd just like more time to exercise, especially when Taco Bell is basically my kitchen five days a week.

I honestly think I would live off the land before I would do what you do. YMMV.

indy_kid:The assembly line at the Ford plant in the very early days was so fast, workers would become psychotic and attack each other. Henry Ford slowed the line and the violence quickly subsided.

The difference there is that back then you had an employer who realized when he was overworking his employees and rectified the situation for the benefit of all involved. You don't get that so much nowadays.

Nick Nostril:autopsybeverage: Farkingwhatever: I agree. It has something to do with the "get up at 6am, drive to work at 8am to get there by nine, work 'til 5 or 6pm, then get home at 6:30-8:30pm, then try to LIVE a little bit before you realize you gotta go to bed soon because you need to repeat what you just did" philosophy. No family for me, thanks.

I got up at 6, left the hotel at 7, worked until 6, then drove until I got to the next hotel at 11:30 so I can do the same thing at another business tomorrow. So at least you go home at night... mine only sees me from Thursday nights til Sunday afternoons, and then I'm usually in my home office getting reports finished and prepping for two weeks out. On the other hand, I love what I do. I'd just like more time to exercise, especially when Taco Bell is basically my kitchen five days a week.

I honestly think I would live off the land before I would do what you do. YMMV.

This.

I work a shiatload of hours but only because I use flexible scheduling so that I get to spend lots of time with my kids. We have cut back on people here and the workload is the same (if not more) but two things keep me from looking for another gig (and IT is hot in this area, unemployment for IT workers is only ~3% in the Denver metro)

1. A crap ton of money. We make above industry average for salary and on top of that get bonuses that are ~10% of salary. Plus a very good ESPP, I profited close to another 10% of my salary on that alone, also RSUs that vest every year.

2. No "schedule". We work from home once a week and pretty much come and go as we please, so long as we get the work done.

That being said it isn't uncommon for me to be logging in at 11:00 at night to finish some stuff but the kids are in bed already and I took them to practice or play at the park earlier.

PunGent:Most people I know in the corporate world, of both genders, are working much harder these days than a decade ago. Most of them were "lucky" enough to survive layoffs...so now they're doing two jobs instead of one. They're hard working and conscientious, but it's not mathematically possible to do two...or more than two...full-time jobs at the same time...so quality inevitably suffers.

And before you say "so what", I'll just add that some of them test drugs for efficacy and purity. Drugs for humans. Drugs you may be putting inside yourself some day.

What could possibly go wrong?

My company tries to do stuff like that when we land a new account. Cut a few positions and the whole operation works like a engine that is misfiring. I actually had to calculate it out that they way they wanted things run in the timeframe they wanted would be impossible usnless they had another person or cut everyones lunch by 15 or 30 min.

AverageAmericanGuy:Deacon Blue: Yeah, you do all that, and then some asshole hacks your account, steals what he wants, sells the rest, and deletes all your toons except for the level one blue haired gnome you rolled for the 20 man raid on Hogger. So you get so depressed you delete the entire game. Game over, man, game over.

SuperTramp:U.S. The Only Advanced Economy That Does Not Require Employers To Provide Paid Vacation Time

[b-i.forbesimg.com image 624x445]

Good, the government shouldn't be mandating our benefit requirements. And our GDP is greater than most those other countries put together. So we got that going for us at least. I'm sure that's unrelated.

groppet:PunGent: Most people I know in the corporate world, of both genders, are working much harder these days than a decade ago. Most of them were "lucky" enough to survive layoffs...so now they're doing two jobs instead of one. They're hard working and conscientious, but it's not mathematically possible to do two...or more than two...full-time jobs at the same time...so quality inevitably suffers.

And before you say "so what", I'll just add that some of them test drugs for efficacy and purity. Drugs for humans. Drugs you may be putting inside yourself some day.

What could possibly go wrong?

My company tries to do stuff like that when we land a new account. Cut a few positions and the whole operation works like a engine that is misfiring. I actually had to calculate it out that they way they wanted things run in the timeframe they wanted would be impossible usnless they had another person or cut everyones lunch by 15 or 30 min.

sufferpuppet:SuperTramp: U.S. The Only Advanced Economy That Does Not Require Employers To Provide Paid Vacation Time

[b-i.forbesimg.com image 624x445]

Good, the government shouldn't be mandating our benefit requirements. And our GDP is greater than most those other countries put together. So we got that going for us at least. I'm sure that's unrelated.

Prosperity is more than the accumulation of material wealth, young grasshopper. It's also about the joy of everyday life.

BEER_ME_in_CT:Why do we all have to work more now as opposed to the Husband as bread winner home by 5:30 for dinner every night with family of decades past? Just look at executive pay vs avg for every company since the 1950's. Its obvious. Yet when you say things like that your a socialist and you hate America. Whatever.

My Sister and BIL live and work in Germany and they always have free time to travel or tour the countryside on bikes or whatever they choose to do. We are the suckers here folks.

llortcM_yllort:BEER_ME_in_CT: Why do we all have to work more now as opposed to the Husband as bread winner home by 5:30 for dinner every night with family of decades past? Just look at executive pay vs avg for every company since the 1950's. Its obvious. Yet when you say things like that your a socialist and you hate America. Whatever.

My Sister and BIL live and work in Germany and they always have free time to travel or tour the countryside on bikes or whatever they choose to do. We are the suckers here folks.

Not quite. As a nation, we had a choice whether to increase quality of life or decrease working hours. Even if not everyone made that same choice, enough people did to drag the entire country in that same direction. So now we have nicer stuff, even if we don't have that much more free time. Even then, despite the conventional wisdom, average weekly hours worked has dropped since 1964. Average annual hours worked is also lower than it was in 1964 despite a spike in the 1990s. (Caveats: I couldn't find any pre-1964 data and it seems that, for whatever reason, any FRED data on this subject was either discontinued in 2010/2011 or didn't start collecting data until 2006 or 2007).

Actually, scratch the discontinued bit. Average annual was discontinued but average weekly is still calculated.

It's up to you to choose the job that doesn't have the mindset that you're available 24/7It's up to you to set your terms...and don't put yourself in the position where you're asked to do more than the base.

They'll suck you dry if you allow it.

If you got a place like that...start planning your move to another.There is more to life than work.

Work good.Live better.

I don't mind working hard...but it needs to be within reason...and within a certain time-frame.

patrick767:Beware_Me:This is why Continental Europe has contributed nothing to human civilization in the post-war era.

Not sure if serious./Poe's law?

I can spend days listing off the cultural and technological achievements of America since the end of World War II. What cultural or technological achievements can you list for France, Spain or any other Continental European country in that time period? Off of the top of my head, the only thing that comes to mind is New Wave cinema.

Beware_Me:patrick767: Beware_Me:This is why Continental Europe has contributed nothing to human civilization in the post-war era.

Not sure if serious./Poe's law?

I can spend days listing off the cultural and technological achievements of America since the end of World War II. What cultural or technological achievements can you list for France, Spain or any other Continental European country in that time period? Off of the top of my head, the only thing that comes to mind is New Wave cinema.

llortcM_yllort:BEER_ME_in_CT: Why do we all have to work more now as opposed to the Husband as bread winner home by 5:30 for dinner every night with family of decades past? Just look at executive pay vs avg for every company since the 1950's. Its obvious. Yet when you say things like that your a socialist and you hate America. Whatever.

My Sister and BIL live and work in Germany and they always have free time to travel or tour the countryside on bikes or whatever they choose to do. We are the suckers here folks.

Not quite. As a nation, we had a choice whether to increase quality of life or decrease working hours. Even if not everyone made that same choice, enough people did to drag the entire country in that same direction. So now we have nicer stuff, even if we don't have that much more free time. Even then, despite the conventional wisdom, average weekly hours worked has dropped since 1964. Average annual hours worked is also lower than it was in 1964 despite a spike in the 1990s. (Caveats: I couldn't find any pre-1964 data and it seems that, for whatever reason, any FRED data on this subject was either discontinued in 2010/2011 or didn't start collecting data until 2006 or 2007).

I believe those are PAID HOURS worked.

Nowadays unpaid overtime is the norm and thus isn't tracked via W2 forms, which is where the Labor department would get the data.

Sometimes its overt "work until 7 or your fired"

Sometimes its not overt, it's your blackberry buzzing all night, it's being stuck in meetings all day so you stay late to "catch up" on work, it's end of year deadlines, or it's the fear that if you say "no, I'm overloaded" you'll be fired.

shortymac:llortcM_yllort: BEER_ME_in_CT: Why do we all have to work more now as opposed to the Husband as bread winner home by 5:30 for dinner every night with family of decades past? Just look at executive pay vs avg for every company since the 1950's. Its obvious. Yet when you say things like that your a socialist and you hate America. Whatever.

My Sister and BIL live and work in Germany and they always have free time to travel or tour the countryside on bikes or whatever they choose to do. We are the suckers here folks.

Not quite. As a nation, we had a choice whether to increase quality of life or decrease working hours. Even if not everyone made that same choice, enough people did to drag the entire country in that same direction. So now we have nicer stuff, even if we don't have that much more free time. Even then, despite the conventional wisdom, average weekly hours worked has dropped since 1964. Average annual hours worked is also lower than it was in 1964 despite a spike in the 1990s. (Caveats: I couldn't find any pre-1964 data and it seems that, for whatever reason, any FRED data on this subject was either discontinued in 2010/2011 or didn't start collecting data until 2006 or 2007).

I believe those are PAID HOURS worked.

Nowadays unpaid overtime is the norm and thus isn't tracked via W2 forms, which is where the Labor department would get the data.

Sometimes its overt "work until 7 or your fired"

Sometimes its not overt, it's your blackberry buzzing all night, it's being stuck in meetings all day so you stay late to "catch up" on work, it's end of year deadlines, or it's the fear that if you say "no, I'm overloaded" you'll be fired.

The problem with this assertion is that it is based on anecdotes and no evidence or data exists to back it up. If this phenomenon is so prevalent, why is there no record of it?